Geoff Barrow interview/battle (FULL)

One Song

The episode features a deep-dive conversation between the One Song hosts and musician Geoff Barrow regarding whether deconstructing music pr

Key takeaways

• Geoff Barrow argues that turning music into 'maths' and technical process can historically ruin genres like rock, jazz, and metal.
• The hosts contend that deconstruction can lower barriers for new artists by showing that greatness is a result of work rather than innate perfection.

Main topics

• Music deconstruction debate
• Portishead and Beak> history

Notable quotes

Why does everyone need to break everything down to weird maths?

Conclusion

A thoughtful exploration of the tension between technical transparency

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey, One Song Nature, we've got an exciting episode for you today. We're unlocking the Patreon and releasing our already famous and contentious interview with Jeff Barrow of Portishead and scores of classic films like Ex Machina and Civil War. Speaker 4 (0:14) That's right. This conversation began after Jeff Barrow from Portishead, one of my favorite bands, got a little beefy in the DMs underneath one of our One Song videos. And it turns out we have pretty different views. about breaking down music, like even should it be done, should the show exist. Hey, and for the record, I have your back, Lux. Speaker 2 (0:35) I appreciate that. Enjoy the most polite fight of the century, Luxury versus Jeff Barrow. Speaker 2 (0:44) One song Patreon people in the red corner in a really cool designer tee from a really cool band Whispering interpolation to himself over and over the man so hardcore. He rocks double X's in his own name luxury Speaker 2 (1:04) And in the blue corner, a musician, producer, remixer, and film score from the band Portishead, the record label Invada, and films such as Ex Machina, Civil War, and the upcoming game, the one, the only, Jeff Barrow! Why are these music legends fighting? It all started in the DMs. The question, does breaking down music ruin it? We're getting into that today, only on the one song Patreon. Let's go! Speaker 4 (1:37) It's great to have you on. And I love the origin story. The people need to know how we got here. So let's get into it. Besides being fans, you commented on a video wonderfully about a month or so ago. One of our episodes that we did, the Farsight episode, we talk about Dilla. Speaker 4 (2:13) And that was one of those in the weeds breakdowns. We do them every episode, but that was especially in the weeds. And perhaps in that moment, I mean, I want to hear from you, so I won't, I won't, I won't preset it up too much, but something. Oh man, this fight is Speaker 2 (2:27) already going horribly. You're way too polite, Blake. You're way too polite. Speaker 4 (2:30) Something chapped your hide. You jumped in the comments and you, you wanted to discuss whether this was the best thing to do with music. Talk about it. at this level. Tell us more about what prompted you to jump into the comments and say, are Speaker 3 (2:47) we sure we Speaker 1 (2:47) want to break down music this much? Speaker 5 (2:49) Um, I suppose, first of all, I didn't, I didn't ask, how are you guys? Oh, it's been one of them weird days. I'm at the end of the working week and it's like, um, it's just been, yeah, a bit, a bit full on. And I've just realized I've got to now talk about this thing. And I didn't ask. Speaker 5 (3:10) And I didn't ask how you guys were and how was your weeks. Man, Speaker 2 (3:14) we've had a great week. We've had a great week in part because we've been looking forward to talking to you. Jeff, when I say, we don't say this to everybody we talk to. I feel like your music has meant so much to us for decades. Just the idea that, like, you know, you might leave a comment that Blake would take it terribly and that we would end up on the Zoom together. I'm going to keep making him the bad guy. It's just it's amazing to me that we get to talk to a person who we have so much respect for. And I'm not going to. And with that, I'm not going to, like, put you, like, on the spot. Yeah, please, please stop. Speaker 5 (3:51) Yeah, it's a weird feeling. You know what I mean? Well, now you're just Speaker 2 (3:56) a friend of ours, so we won't see you anymore. Yeah, Speaker 5 (3:59) that's right. Yeah, so we can insult each other quite freely, basically. Listen, if you Speaker 4 (4:06) like, I'll actually answer your question really honestly to give you a bunch of opportunities to find really soft, vulnerable spots. Terrible week. Not in a good mood, other than talking to you. you know, a little bit distressed about what do musicians do for money at a certain point? Like all of that's really on my mind. So this is a great distraction that we are going to break down, breaking down music with a legend. That's so exciting to me. Speaker 5 (4:31) Well, look, so, so, I mean, I know what your week's been like. I mean, I've run, I run our label over here, Invader. And, and I've, you know, been part of like indie music, even though it was signed to a major. I don't know how we got there in the end, but I mean, ultimately, you know, everything we did was always kind of, we, every, all the music we ever loved was all kind of indie stuff. You know what I mean? Whether it be, whether it be on Stone's throw or whether it be on what, whatever, you know what I mean? It was like, you know, but, um, so, so yeah, it's tough at the moment. I was just talking to an artist now and, and it's tough, it's tough out there. it's pretty mean at the moment, you know, like people are really concerned that, I mean, like they, they put all their heart and soul into a pit, into a record and then it can just be, someone just swipes past it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's, it's pretty demoralizing, you know? Um, and if, if you take it that way, it can be really bad. Can't, you know what I mean? So you, right. Speaker 4 (5:34) You have to find some Speaker 5 (5:35) joy. You have to find some joy somehow. You have to find some Speaker 4 (5:39) joy. Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned that because obviously just for people who don't know, since Portishead, you have been doing, you have continued to make music under various guises from Beak, which is one of the great, maybe underrated. I mean, maybe you feel like you're wonderfully, perfectly rated, but I love Beak. And Beak is, for anyone who loves Portishead and hasn't discovered Beak, do that next. You will love it. Speaker 5 (6:23) Well, I don't know about Speaker 4 (6:24) that. Oh, no? You think Portishead fans are disappointed? Speaker 5 (6:27) You can say that, but I think that most people that actually listen to Portishead would just go, what the living fuck is this? You know what I mean? Like, you know, but yeah, no, I have been, I have been, I have been, yeah, we made third in 20, 2008. Since then, I've not really stopped. I've kind of like, you know, so I set up Invader, which we mainly do film scores. It's kind of my main kind of day job now is doing film scores. But we release other people's. We just, you know, we do Stranger Things and Carl and Michael and all that stuff. Wow, that's Speaker 3 (7:06) so Speaker 5 (7:06) cool. Yeah, and we do Netflix stuff and Drive, the soundtrack. We release that on vinyl, and it's mainly vinyl stuff. But yeah, we just did an amazing film, Surat. I don't know if you've seen a film called Surat yet. No, Speaker 4 (7:20) is it about the painter? Speaker 5 (7:21) It's one of the most devastatingly amazing films out there. It's just like it won a lot of awards. It's like a techno score. But as a film, it's astonishing. It's just like, and that's what really floats, you know, film really kind of floats my boat. You know, music, of course, but I feel like I've been in the trenches with that for far too long. I have Speaker 4 (7:44) a lot of questions about that, but you've just, you're about to release, I think, your first film. Is that right? That you actually co-wrote and produced? Speaker 5 (7:51) Yeah, set up Invader Films. based off of invader records like we've made a film 150 grand with a bunch of friends um it's getting it's coming out on um acidic acidic scope industries um uh which was um the beast of always film company um that's going to be coming out in the states so i'm just I'm absolutely amazed that someone over there actually saw it and really liked it. So, yeah, I'm going to come and hopefully I'll be in some cinemas. So, I mean, it's a tough game, but we're in it, you know. Speaker 4 (8:25) That's incredible. Kind of brings us full circle. So maybe we can back up and we'll get to the fight in just a second. We'll get to the arguing. And it may not be contentious at all, unfortunately, because we're friendly, polite people. And actually, it was even fun in the comments. I mean, like I never Diallo is being funny, but like the back and forth was extraordinarily just gentle and like. academic like it wasn't look i i Speaker 2 (8:46) introduced this with a boxing with a boxing sound so we have to keep it contentious right Speaker 5 (8:52) okay yeah well i'm up for that we'll play it up play Speaker 4 (8:54) it up in a second but because you've mentioned it to me what's interesting and i'm already going to analyze you sorry just momentarily and in a small and bloody obvious way clearly cinematic music has been a driver for all the music i've ever heard by you there's clearly there's been something about sound and evoking maybe visuals that's been there since the earliest Portishead videos. Wasn't it music about a film that was never made or something like that? Yeah. Tell us about that. Speaker 5 (9:24) I think basically it's like when you write scores, you're not tied down to the traditional songwriting kind of, you know. Set up. So, you know, chorus bridge, you know, just arrangements. And then also with sounds like, you know, you're not chasing like a popular sound. You're actually trying to get if you're doing a psychological thriller, you're trying to get trying to basically explain what's in someone's head to a sound. I mean, so for me, it always was like, you know, the most amazing stuff. If you listen to experimental kind of. And everybody was doing it as well. So people in film music were taken from pop music. They were taken from music concrete. They were just like... Everything, really. And yeah, so it's always been a thing. Most of the samples from Portishead really come, usually come from films, you know. And now, so it made sense when I moved into film scores and I started working with Alex Garland, you know, and did Ex Machina and Civil War and stuff. Amazing work Speaker 2 (10:36) on this. Speaker 5 (10:37) It just made sense, you know what I mean? This is, you know, the idea of writing a song kind of... I was kind of over it, really, you know? Speaker 2 (10:46) Yeah, I just wanted to take a step back. And I remember Melody Maker describing your first album as musique noire for a movie not yet made. I came to you via hip-hop. Because, you know, people early on in the 90s were like, yo, there's like this music that's primarily coming out of the UK that sounds like kind of sounds like hip hop, but it's got like white people singing over it. You know, as described to me. But, you know, to this day, I can talk to people who are hip hop DJs and like people who don't really listen to a whole lot of like non, you know, black American music who will still talk about Portishead in the same. tell us that they'll talk about DJ Premiere, DJ Shadow and stuff like that. I do want to bring up, you know, did you, when you started transitioning to, you know, Exit Out of Speaker 5 (11:42) the Speaker 2 (11:42) Git Shop and some of these other things, did you find it was a completely different process or was it sort of like pulling together the music that you had done before? Speaker 5 (11:50) Yeah, that was an interesting one because I started. started on that film as just like as a kind of a music supervisor really and then but they realized that we could just make our you know we could just make our own you know music that sounds like it's from like you know, like wild style or kind of. And so that was a, it was an amazing thing for me to just kind of just experiment and go, oh man, how did they do that? And what did they do that? I don't know. Now I'm, now I'm getting into this kind of conversation where basically you're going to have me over with, because I've just told, I've just said that I was really into the finding out what production. actually happened in things like wild start and then the other day my comment on your post was was was don't reveal the Speaker 2 (12:40) magic don't pull back the curtain no exactly Speaker 5 (12:42) so so anyway going back to what you're saying about you know um you've discovered important through hip-hop for me that was the greatest thing that ever that ever happened to me basically was the idea that you know i was this kid from like just outside of bristol in a pretty rural town made some beats and made some music that the people that I'd absolutely, you know, they were my gods, you know, like I can remember, you know, someone saying that DJ Premier played one of our tunes and I was like, oh my God, I'm finished. I'm done. I can retire. Speaker 3 (13:18) I Speaker 5 (13:18) can retire now, you know, and, you know, meeting kind of, you know. uh the far side or or what and you just think and you know all the guys on stone's throw as well it's just i've been i feel like i've been incredibly lucky you know but but yeah i mean just for me that was the greatest thing ever kind of happened Speaker 2 (13:37) before before we move on from your influences i promise we will get to the to the punching and the kicking yeah yeah but i i do want to ask you like You know, it seems to me that the 90s was a time when there were a lot of people who were, whether you were in hip-hop or whether there were artists like you. I remember Mort Chiba was another one that a lot of us hip-hop guys were listening to. It seemed like you guys were, there's a lot of, I'd have to call it audio collaging going on. There was a sample from here, a sample from there. There's a lot of talk about postmodern music. And I wonder in this time now when people sample a lot less, I just kind of want to get your read on like, where the music is now because i feel like people don't sample the same way they don't there's um there's a lot of just creating on on laptops and and computers and all the sounds coming from one place what's your take on that Speaker 5 (14:28) it's weird because madly made that record on a on a on an ipad didn't he like on one of i think one of his new newer tune newer things and he's just got so he's just got talent that transfers to any type of you know like hardware software whatever you know what i mean um but yeah i don't know it's a it's a it's a funny one you get like a lot of the mp6 uh mpc 60 boom bat merchants you know um you know still plugging it you know sampling like indian tunes and and putting a big kind of kick and snare over the top. And I mean, but you know, music moves on, doesn't it? So it doesn't surprise me that there's no samples so much. I know that guys are actually writing, getting AI, you know, prompting to make, you know, soul tunes and then sampling them, you know, which kind of like in the line of hip hop doesn't really surprise me. And it doesn't. make me frown at them. It's just like, you know what I mean? It's like, it's kind of a weird thing. That's a collage anyway. It's a combination of people. Yeah, it's a tough one. I don't support it. I don't support AI, but Speaker 3 (15:42) if Speaker 5 (15:43) you're a dude and you've just got your computer and you've got like, you know, UDO or whatever, and it's coming out with some mad 60s organ thing, you can sample it and then strip it into AI kind of beats, bass and... keyboards, then you're going to do it, aren't you? You know what I mean? It's Speaker 4 (16:01) in the lineage of that production tradition of like taking stuff that already exists, recordings, drum machines, and transforming it, reusing it in a new way. It is just kind of the latest version of that. Speaker 5 (16:13) Absolutely it is, yeah. I mean, I suppose that thing of like, I've always paid for my samples, but you know, the majority of the world hasn't, you know. So... I suppose it's the same thing. People who, you know, there's, there's, you know, kind of, um, the people that AI are ripping off are still on getting paid either. Speaker 2 (16:33) That's true. That's true. And by the way, hip hop and music production has always to a certain extent, uh, been about. hey, what do I have access to? So, you know, a lot of kids in the Bronx didn't have instruments to play, so they started playing records. It's Speaker 4 (16:49) punk Speaker 2 (16:49) rock. Yeah, it's usually just like, what do I have access to? I'm going to make the music that I want to hear using that. Speaker 5 (16:54) No, exactly. And what has been one of the baddest things is hip-hop bands sampling Porter's head. That's been mental. I Speaker 3 (17:03) mean, like, I Speaker 5 (17:04) think RZA sampled, like, one of our tunes, and I'm like... you know, what the hell? You know, like, and, but the thing is, we've always had a policy. If a hip hop band samples Paul, we don't charge them. But if basically, if the weekend or someone wants to, like, wants to do that, they can pay full whack. Speaker 2 (17:23) The weekend is pop. The weekend is pop, is your case. Speaker 5 (17:26) Yeah, well, no, it's just that anyone who's signed to a major label and they're just, oh, gotcha, okay, got it, okay. They can afford it, but if you're, you know, an actual hip hop crew, like, you know, and you've got no money, then nah, take it. Speaker 4 (17:39) That's great. I love that attitude. And I think that's really healthy. And also, you know, maybe reasonable based on your own history. However, as you know, you do clear your samples to be clear, you know, to give you proper credit.